Readin’ Report: The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu
By Cassie Birk
Edited by Caelin Sullivan
Check out our report to see if The Subtle Art of Folding Space fits your AANHPI Heritage Month reading list.
Before We Dive In…
Genre: Science Fiction
Age Group: Adult, as well as STEM-loving young adult readers
Content warnings for the following described: Death of a Parent, Emotional Abuse, Confinement, Toxic Sibling Relationship, Gaslighting, Homophobia
Spice Level: None. While our sidekick Daniel is in a loving fluffy relationship with his boyfriend, there are no romantic scenes, subplots, or love interests for the main character. She’s got enough going on without one.
Series: This is a stand alone debut, so no! The Subtle Art of Folding Space had its beginnings in John Chu’s 2015 novella, Hold-Time Violations, but they should be treated as two separate projects, rather than part of the same series.
Page Count: 240 pages
About the Book
Picture the universe as a set of Russian nesting dolls, with the perceivable world just being one matryoshka in the set. That is the mindbending reality of Ellie’s world. Hidden under our doll’s painted surface is the skunkworks, the complex machinery that keeps the physics of the universe functioning. Ellie’s mom was one of the highly trained engineers that maintained the skunkworks and taught Ellie and her older sister Chris the family trade.
Chris has never liked Ellie, accusing her of not being Taiwanese enough, not being a dutiful enough daughter, and not being good enough for her family, especially now that her mother is losing her battle with long-term illness. It doesn’t help that Chris has been attempting to kill her for years. While Chris takes care of their mother who has slipped into a coma at her home in D.C., Ellie is away in Boston at grad school trying to escape from the shadow of her family legacy and the skunkworks.
That is until Ellie’s lovable cousin and fellow black sheep Daniel finds a monstrous device in the skunkworks that is manipulating the fabric of the universe. Not only has this machine been creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of their world, it is the only reason her mom is still alive. Ellie is forced between choosing the good of the universe or her mother’s life, but that’s not the end of it. She and Daniel now have to confront the shadowy cabal of engineers that put the machinery there in the first place.
Reader Profile
You might find this book a great fit for your TBR if:
How to Survive Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu is the ultimate comp here. It is one of my favorite sci-fi books ever, so I am biased, but we have an extraordinary setting with folks doing mundane work, generational trauma, and bringing in themes of identity from an Asian American perspective. That’s just me being brief!
Complex multiverse sci-fi like The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch is your jam.
You like your family drama/trauma in a speculative package like in The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen SookfongLee, Light Years from Home by Mike Chen, and The Space Between Here and Now by Sarah Suk.
If you enjoyed the way The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson approaches climate science or the way real theories of physics inform TheThree-Body Problem by Cixin Lu, then the way quantum mechanics plays a part in The Subtle Art of Folding Spaceis a perfect fit.
About the Author
While The Subtle Art of Folding Space is his first novel, John Chu has published numerous works of shorter fiction. Some of his notable stories are “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” which won a Short Story Hugo, and "If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You," which won the Nebula award for Best Novelette. He also has translated works from Chinese into English for Clarksworld. By day, he works as a microprocessor architect.
You can find him on Bluesky.
What Readers Think
“I liked the story but there was so much going on, so many technical elements, it was difficult to follow at times. I wish there was a bit more explanation or storyline regarding the importance of the mother to the entire system. It was clear she is well respected but not clear why the alterations would be based on her.” —saraspit22 via StoryGraph
“this was so good. while I didn't like the writing style (it was a little dry), the concept was so good. I loved the idea of people who can travel to alternative dimensions and repairing the universe while also navigating family dynamics. and that's the heart of this story. it's sacrifices and grief and learning to let go.” —Vanessa via GoodReads
“I was genuinely confused while listening to this audiobook . . . I think there was a real effort made to make the physics/mechanics different than your average time travel story. However, it was trying so earnestly that it lost plot along the way.” —Abby via Fable
Book Reporter’s Review
This is not a book to read before a meal! John Chu’s descriptions of food are absolutely mouthwatering. From the front cover to the story, there are gorgeous descriptions of dim sum that both triggered my appetite and really honed in on Ellie’s experience as a Taiwanese American struggling with her family dynamics.
While the food and how Chu described the taste of the dim sum really resonated, I found the mechanics of the skunkworks a bit more challenging. I do not have a strong grasp of quantum mechanics, so some of the technical elements of the universe’s mechanisms might have been a bit beyond my grasp. The world is innovative, but with the mix of family drama and mystery (is it Chris trying to blow Ellie up again or the secret cabal of engineers?), there was not a lot of time left for us to really explore the skunkworks and learn its shape. While I had pictured it like an underground utility tunnel full of pipe networks, Daniel takes Ellie to a record library with alien stewards. It was small glimpses that were counter to my mental picture which made me want to know more about the extent of creative departments and fantastical inhuman beings that exist in the space.
What I really wanted was more time. I wanted to sit in Chris’s horrid treatment to get a better picture of how far she went instead of being told what she did after most of the damage had already been done. I wanted to see a normal day in the skunkworks to get a grasp of what a good engineer looks like before meeting a nefarious one. I wanted more time with Daniel and his boyfriend. I want more of all of it!
Some of the brevity may be a symptom of the book coming from a short story and a talented short form writer, but with all that was left to explore, there is room for a sequel. That is something I for one would love to read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Tordotcom team for providing an advanced digital copy for this report!